RIP Max
Max Glauben, co-founder of Dallas Holocaust Museum, passes away
Max Glauben, a Holocaust survivor who co-founded the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, passed away on April 28. He was 94.
Glauben was a part of a group of Dallas Holocaust survivors who came together with the goal of creating a memorial center where they could remember loved ones and educate future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust. The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum opened in downtown Dallas in 2019.
According to a release, he's one of 12 survivors featured in the museum's interactive Dimensions in Testimony Theater experience, and he'll be the featured speaker through the month of May, then continue as the featured survivor every Friday.
Born Moniek Mendel Glauben on January 14, 1928, he grew up in Warsaw, Poland and was only 11 when Germany invaded his hometown. He survived starvation and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto until the defeat of the ghetto uprising in May 1943. He and his family were deported in a box car to Majdanek Death Camp, where his mother and brother were murdered.
Max and his father were selected for slave labor and transported to Budzyn, where his father was murdered, and Max became an orphan. He was held in four other slave labor camps before being sent on a death march to Dachau Concentration Camp.
A few weeks into the death march, Max and his fellow inmates were liberated by the U.S. Army on April 23, 1945. He immigrated to the United States in 1947 and eventually served in the U.S. Army. After being stationed in Fort Hood, he moved to Dallas, where he built a new life with his wife, Frieda.
Recently celebrated by the Museum in November 2021 as the honoree of the Hope for Humanity award, Glauben was named Texan of the Year in 2019 by The Dallas Morning News, and in 2020, SMU conferred upon him an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in recognition for his exceptional and extensive work combatting intolerance and keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive
"Max embodied the spirit of resiliency. He turned the atrocities inflicted upon him, his family, and six million Jews during the Holocaust into a message of kindness, love, and optimism," said Museum President and CEO Mary Pat Higgins in a statement. "He taught us that there is hope in hopelessness and that one person can make a difference."
Max is survived by his loving wife of nearly 69 years, Frieda, their three children, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
